Winter in a Bottle
by theshadowswhisper
Summary: "And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming/ Or the moment of truth in your lies/ When everything seems like the movies/ Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive." Wendy/Kyle


**Lady Nightspike is my supersexy ultrafabulous beta. Go love on her. OH my god, I can't handle her awesomeness 3**

**Disclaimer: South Park is not mine.**

**If you squint a bit, you can fit this in with my other fic "In Strange Places." Up to you, though. **

_Kyle's POV._

_You're not sure exactly how it got to be like this. Not sure when it was, exactly, that you started to notice things about her (like the way she laughs, or the brown freckle on the curve her cheek, or the way one side of her mouth is softer than the other). You aren't sure when you started wonder about things. Like what she's thinking when she is staring out the window. Or why she doesn't smile sometimes. And in your most fragile moments, the kind where you're just a little too honest, you wonder if she ever wonders about you. You think she looks like bottled winter, cold and contained and untouchable. But not knowing why you can't stop looking at her doesn't make it any less of a fact that you do. When everything in the world reminds you of Wendy Testaburger, and she's two feet away from you and doing nothing at-all-extraordinary, its hard (impossible)to convince yourself that you don't think about her far too much. All you really know now is that when she talks, you are listening without meaning to. _

_And when she asks in that friendly-in-the most-polite-way-possible voice of hers whether you want to study for some unimportant test, or project, or homework assignment, you smile and nod without ever thinking about to whom she belongs. _

The discourse of a broken heart is an odd thing, let me tell you. In between moments of breathless, exquisite ripping though your chest, and the sinking in the pit of your stomach that is physically heavy to carry around, a weighted reminder of your dread and your pain, there is stunning clarity. And it is within this clarity, this numb lull between the sunbursts of aching, that I realize: she's left me with nothing. I've let her take it all.

I'm a good best friend, or I used to be. Still, every single day, I wear the most understanding and caring of smiles for Stan. Every single day, I hold in my guts so that when Stan's come splashing out, I can help him instead of me. I comfort him. I give him solid advice when he asks it of me. Experience and dedication have taught me how to be exactly what he needs. I stay quiet in those moments where silence is healing. I know when to push and when to let it be. I know what he needs to hear to make a situation feel all right again. I have never, ever begrudged Stan Marsh a single minute of my time. Until now.

But I am not perfect, and she has taken even this from me. At night time, I am a traitor. Sitting by my window watching the streetlights flicker to life, I give into wishing for the things I really want. Stan's happiness is more important to me than my own, but at night, I let my toxic desires win out and sink into the misery of dreaming. At night, I drown in what I mustn't feel but do. At night I am my heart.

_I'm agreeing with her. Nodding my head, I stop midway because I'm agreeing with her. Somewhere during Wendy's senseless rant, her screechy tirade that couldn't possibly be meant for anything but an assault on my ears, I started hearing sense. And it turns out that what she's saying undeniably sounds like she's in the right. I'm processing as she goes along, and I realize, can't help but to notice, that not only does everything she says sound far more like reason than I'd ever have given her credit for, it doesn't stop there. It's also fair, and intelligent, and astoundingly sensitive. I forget that I'm supposed to be on Stan's side and just listen to her. She watches my face as she speaks. She has harnessed the blunt side of emotion and mastered the sharp side of logic. The argument belongs to her._

"_You know?" she asks at last, flushed and defiant._

"_Yeah." And I do._

A dull scratching from downstairs, and I go open my front door. Turning the knob, peering around, I find those liquid brown, guileless eyes peering back at me, damp and bright from my doorstep. The tiniest whimper quivers in the air, and she furrows her brow at me in a silent plea. She's shivering, so pathetic and cold; as much as I want to close the door and walk away, I just can't.

"Bad dog, Jordie," I mutter, dragging the creature inside by the collar and shutting the door. The moment I release her, Jordie jumps up, puts her paws on my knees. Her big doggie smile, tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth makes me laugh as I reach down to ruffle her shaggy tan fur. Wendy's dog is a lot like her master: too smart to be locked in when she wants to get out. The Testaburgers still haven't found a way to keep her from getting back to me.

Any other time of day, I'd send Ike back with the dog, so I wouldn't have to face her alone. But with my nighttime thoughts and the irresistible scent of her twirling in the forefront of my consciousness, I won't back down now the way I would if there was light outside.

Stroking the soft fur behind Jordie's ears, I glance at the faint digital clock blinking above the stove. It is eight o'clock. It isn't late enough to put it off till tomorrow, and with this last justification, I take the tattered length of rope from under the kitchen sink and loop it under Jordie's black leather collar. She hops excitedly, anticipating being walked. I sigh as I pull open the door and head out, prancing dog in tow. The familiar route to Wendy's is crisp with crinkling with winter air, the sky above me pierced with prickling stars. I trudge along, every step skidding over the ice is weighted with painfully familiar anticipation.

_You aren't jealous. You can't be, because it's always been like this, and you're too used to the way things are to feel differently about them. Wendy and Stan have been Wendy and Stan for as long as you can remember, and so when it occurs to you in an avalanche of obvious that she isn't really just another facet of your Best Friend's personality, it takes awhile for it to stop feeling like a revelation. You keep falling into this odd sort of epiphany, over and over, every time she demonstrates that she is a human being and not just an entry in Stan's story and therefore yours. Until suddenly it's like she was there all the time._

_You didn't realize this would be a problem, however, until she says something about Cartman's overactive sweat-glands, and you're laughing till your sides dig into you, and the lumpy, flushing twist in your stomach tells you very clearly that you'll never see Wendy in your peripheral vision again. She lights up your sight now, whether you want her to or not. _

Wendy's house spills yellow light into the darkness like sand rushing out of split seams. Three quiet knocks and the door opens for me. Immediately my body stiffens, the scraping of the wood over the bristly doormat a call to attention, and I catch a breath that rattles in my chest. Wendy's head peers around the door. Tongue frozen to the roof of my mouth, jaw immobile because I can feel my heartbeat in my neck, I pull Jordie out in front of me instead of explaining. Wendy nods and bends, untying the knots around Jordie's collar.

"Thanks," her voice is raspy, sharp and rough against my skin. I swallow back the hot rush of remembering, fingers clenching around the nothingness in my pockets. Jordie scampers between her feet and into the tans and beiges of her living room, leaping obliviously onto a suede couch and curling into a content furry ball behind Wendy's back. Wendy skips over my gaze, instead watching the snow melting at my feet. Her eyes are violet petals sweeping over me, never meeting mine. Her gentle avoidance burns cold and fiery like ice.

I can't breathe for a moment. Rising, she catches me as I watch her inky hair fall over her shoulder, dark and rippling in motion as it whispers over her pale blue sweater. She's unspeakably beautiful, but I can't reach her like this. When she's right in front of me she never seems farther away.

"So," Quickly, trying to smother the feelings that I'm about to be shut out, I put a hand on the door to stop her from closing it, "You and…you and Stan." I spit the words out and shake off the bitter flavor they leave. A filmy, impenetrable glaze falls over her eyes; she bites her lip. Even as I shrug away the wavering in my voice, I sink into my shoes.

_And she's like sunlight, pouring through your window. You wish it was easier to make yourself want to shut it out. Its moments like this one, when her fingers are stained with sticky black from the pen that exploded while she was coping notes in World Civ and her ponytail's crooked and she's talking about the answer to #4 like she's fighting some kind of war against ignorance, that make you wish she'd go back to being elevator music in the hallways of your life. _

_Because she's talking right through you. She's climbing into your brain and softening your thoughts into feelings, and you have no idea how she's doing it without even trying. So when she slides a brisk question mark on a piece of lined notebook paper under your nose, slanted eyebrows asking you what exactly you are staring at, you realize she might very well turn you inside out without ever knowing it. And it's only the quiet feelings in your chest clenching heavier and heavier that make you wonder why you care so much._

"Should I say congratulations?" I ask her, pressing on and I'm leaking, words scrunched together like the scrawling print of an unsteady hand. Two beats, three beats. Watching her and waiting for an answer, I ache to fill the space with words so I don't get lost in the emptiness.

"You don't have to," she is so quiet, but I search her voice for give. For a hint that she feels SOMETHING and I'm not alone on her doorstep. She only sounds tired. I fight to keep my head above the churning tide of icy desperation, but I'm too heavy with doubt to stay afloat. She won't save me now.

"I…" I don't have an answer, but I want to keep talking. Need her to say something, I need it like thread knotted and wound around my lungs and pulled tighter, cutting and squeezing—I just don't know what—or how to make her say it.

"_Wendy."_ I stumble over my sudden panic, overwhelming and tanged with metallic fear. She flinches and steps back, but I follow her, half through the doorway barging into her quiet house without ever really entering. She backs up, but I'm faster—I step too close. Inches apart I can taste her breath over my face.

_It's strange how you never noticed how she's smarter than you are. But even now, when you're scared to acknowledge the thing that sits between you and her like a glass creature with hollow eyes, she sees more than you ever could. One nod, her chin dipping low and fast before she puts a hand over yours is all she needs to do to let you know you aren't the only one who walks in misty denial to protect yourself from the day break of what you really want._

_She says, "friends," like it's a pledge or a promise and you choke back a question you never wanted to word anyways and tell her, "of course" like it doesn't hurt to say._

"Wendy." I repeat, soft and insistent.

"_Don't!"_ her hands fly up to push me back but stop before touching. I grab them, yank them to my shoulders, forcing her to me as I lean into her. She sharply turns her head with closed eyes, wrenching away with her hands pressed like petals to my jacket.

"Don't," she repeats, soft and broken.

"_Don't move in with Stan,"_ I plead the words into her temple, grabbing her wrists and guiding her closer. She resists but only just enough to show me she's resisting; she fights only until the heat of my skin seeps into hers through the cotton of her sweater and plastic weave of my coat. Then she is still and pliant, curved over my chest lightly as rainfall.

"N-No," she protests, muffled into the hollow of my shoulder. It's a defiant noise, a fluttering helplessness making her futile attempts to break free seem so small. I put my hands over her hips and inhale the way she smells like summertime and cinnamon. I'm savoring her, drinking her in because I might never get to hold her like this again. I'm so, so fragile with her. Clutching handfuls of blue, the fabric of her pullover, yielding and dry between my fingers, I breathe her name over the shell of her ear. She just stands there and trembles and trembles.

_Wendy's lips brush against yours with the gentlest insistence. Every fingerprint she leaves impressed on your skin sears and scorches you with her feather-light touches, scattered over your bare arms._

"_Oh," a tiny, desperate noise, you plead into her precious, open mouth. You always knew you she made you helpless, and now it's the only thing you can possibly know. She curls her tongue around the sound and scrapes her fingernails along your wrists as you gasp for air. Her body, thrown over the papers you've spent all afternoon filling with information and notes, rustles as she rises up on her toes to change the angle of your kiss. Now her mouth is much closer, lips pressed dizzyingly firm and near; so good, so close, it almost hurts to have her lips set so deeply into yours. The slight pant hitching in your chest, eyes shut and squeezed tight—she slithers into the empty spaces under your skin until you're bursting with sparkling, liquid heat. Like biting down on a lemon, the sizzling shock of her behind your lips cuts through the haze of your thoughts and overpowers your senses. _

_And then she is rustling again, dragging that torturous, necessary mouth back and tucking her hands away to fold at her sides like wings. _

"_Sorry," she mutters, and you put your fingers to the slick place she left between your lips, to see if you can still feel her there. _

For awhile, we stand there. She doesn't move, but with every second that trickles over us, I feel she's slipping. Before I can think of something to pull her back in, Jordie lets out a low whine, Wendy's head turns, and the spell is broken.

"I have…have to pack," she moves away, fading into her house with reluctant, sure steps. I reach out with a hand that I immediately retract to catch her, but she is out of my grasp, the doorframe over my head and under my feet holding me in place.

_And you know you should have kept your mouth shut. But you've been waiting all day by the scruffy brick wall at the side of the school building for her to meet you here. You never really could stop yourself from wanting her to know how you feel, even when you knew she didn't want you to tell her. Or when you knew she didn't care, not enough._

_You don't say a word, but when she finds you, her eyes are wet and heavy with disappointment (you shouldn't have done that, she says silently. We can't play like this anymore)._

"_I'm sorry," you tell her uselessly, but it makes no difference. She shakes her head as she walks away with the whole day you spent waiting for her crumpled in her fist. She's moved on; she knows better. You wonder if you will ever catch up with her._

"I'm moving in with Stan," she says it like a wavering defense. The conviction goes in and out, and she looks altogether uncertain, so I shake my head, open my mouth to respond. But she says it louder, shouting at me this time:

"_I'm moving in with Stan!" _

And then she runs up the stairs, leaving the door hanging open and thudding footsteps echoing hollowly behind her. Jordie meets my eye. The shrimpy compassion in her uncomprehending dog-eyes is more than I ever got from her owner. I step back outside, stiffly and slowly. Closing the door on Wendy's house, turning my back and heading back down the soggy streets, I cannot see past my own thoughts, whirring like feverish dust clouds and kicking up particles of sense and feeling till I'm numb and shivering.

Once upon a time Wendy had been the one to let Jordie out to run and find me so I'd come back to her. Once upon a time, I wouldn't have been frozen at the doorway of her house. I would have easily followed her up the stairs and never thought of her cardboard boxes, neatly filled with her blue and red and yellow sweaters, her books, and her things. Never had to hope the damn dog never got out again; Wendy wouldn't be home to take her back. Because Wendy would be with Stan, with her cardboard boxes, and smiles and light blue sweaters and her eyes like purpleyblue flower petals.

But she's like bottled winter, cold and beautiful and contained. And I can watch her through the glass but never, ever touch her.


End file.
